Steel City - The Lighthouse with intro by Rocky Thomas

History of The Lighthouse is History of the Hinsons “ ‘The Lighthouse’ was written in the latter part of my teens." reflects Ronnie Hinson. "The way ‘The Lighthouse’ came about…We were just ignorant little kids coming out of church singing from the hymnals. (We) really couldn’t understand anything about paid concerts – buy a ticket to go hear people sing church music – that didn’t make sense to us.” Ronnie continued explaining how the group started singing. “Someone bought me a ticket to hear the famous Speer Family. That night I feel in love with Gospel music. I took all of my savings, all of my allowance as a kid, and bought everybody else tickets to go hear them 150 miles away at another town. I was hooked.” “So we started our own little singing group and we were singing on the program as a warm up group with all of the big, major groups that came from the east coast with their big tour buses – we lived in California.”, Ronnie explained. “They would sing all of their newest songs. The Goodmans, the Rambos, the Oak Ridge Boys when they were singing Gospel music.” Ronnie paused reflectively, “We knew nothing about competitiveness – trying to out sing one group or the other – we knew nothing about that. We were just from the church and loving this new sound of Southern Gospel music and we were getting to sing.” Ronnie Hinson went on to explain how his relatives in Arkansas and out east would send him 8 track tapes of the latest Southern Gospel music from his favorite groups. “We would learn all of the latest, newest, hit songs like ‘Who Am I’, ‘I Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My (and he paused slightly and chuckled) Jersey Cow’, and ‘Had It Not Been’, all of the big hit songs.”